Photoshopped image created last year by Jimmy Reynolds
Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin, on Open Democracy, writes:
This spring, Irish voters will return to the polls to vote in a General Election and the current government partners — centrist Fine Gael and putatively centre-left Labour — will need to defend the last five years of deep austerity policies. The timing of this election suggests that pinkwashing will be one of the country’s hottest trends for 2016.
Simply defined, pinkwashing is the practice of projecting a state or organisation as gay-friendly in order to soften or downplay its more negative characteristics…”
“In Ireland, the government coalition that has established Ireland as the golden child of Europe’s austerity states — gladly imposing vicious cuts across society and lapping up the approbation of the troika — will now attempt to rinse all of that away with the success of a single political campaign, in which they demonstrate support for a single, narrow, neoliberal form of equality. This is textbook pinkwashing.
The process has already begun. The recently-launched campaign invites young emigrants to come #hometowork, appropriating the #hometovote movement, which saw thousands of young people travel home to vote ‘Yes’ in the referendum. The posters fail to explain exactly what work these returning emigrants (numbering nearly half a million since the 2008 crash, 85% of them under 35) are expected to do, in the context of extreme generational inequality and a continuing youth unemployment rate of 19.7%.
Similarly, a government minister described the opportunity to reform Direct Provision, Ireland’s controversial accommodation system for asylum seekers, as another “Yes Equality moment” (referencing the most popular slogan of the referendum campaign).
Whatever warm glow he was attempting to transmit will hardly reach those asylum seekers who have spent as much as seven years in Direct Provision centres where, as they await court judgments on their cases, they receive an independent allowance of €19.10 per week, have no entitlement to work, live with little to no privacy, and in extremely restrictive conditions.”
“The other major political event of the year, the celebration of the centenary of the 1916 Rising, will also be pink-tinged. In the course of the referendum campaign, Yes activists repeatedly invoked the promise contained in the Proclamation of the Irish Republic that the state would guarantee “religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens”, pursuing “the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and all of its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally”.
“No reference, of course, to the reality of a virulently Catholic rebellion (launched at Easter to represent the resurrection of the Irish people) that ultimately gave rise to a violently Catholic state. Or to the fact that when a high-profile campaign sought clemency for Roger Casement, convicted of treason and sentenced to death for his part in the Rising, British authorities had only to leak diaries revealing his homosexuality to ensure that Irish support for him crumbled.”
Is Ireland about to become the pinkwashing capital of the world? (Open Democracy)
Credit where credit’s du……WAIT NO BLUESHIRTS EVERYWHERE INDEPENDANCE WAS A MISTAKE SMASH THE GOVERNNMENT.
Ffs, this gets more and more irritating.
A whisper of rationality from Rotide. Difficult to hear though with all the background noise.
can’t you read rotide? they’re pinkshirts now..
Dear rotide
Have you no regard at all for the poor government?
This Spring is going to be a hoot!
Dumb article -“gladly imposing vicious cuts across society and lapping up the approbation of the troika”
No special love for either coalition party but thank fupp no one else was in government the last 5 years.
I hope people that write articles like this remain where they are on the side lines with no decisive popular appeal and nowhere near the reins of power
In fairness to our horrible government, full of the incompetent and the delusional, their advertising campaign for re-election is obviously going to cast them in a positive light. You don’t need to speculate about that. Still though, fupp’em.
Dumb article -“gladly imposing vicious cuts across society and lapping up the approbation of the troika”
No special love for either coalition party but thank Jahoba (removal of naughty word to avoid filter) no one else was in government the last 5 years.
I hope people that write articles like this remain where they are on the side lines with no decisive popular appeal and nowhere near the reins of power
What a confusing articles; careens from one issue to the next, without offering anything to support any of its stranger suppositions.
Can we tell all the emmigrants coming home to stop going on about how great it is over there? I didn’t realise we could
You just can’t win, can you
never bet against the house
Who can’t win exactly? You’d rather we just bought all the spin no questions asked? Even though it’s pretty clear who this government have been looking after, & who they have not?
The real problem with this country is the slow minded easily bought people, who don’t ask questions, & are going to vote for FG. The sort who continue to use spoons where forks work best.
Aren’t you the lucky one, so much more clever than everyone else?
I would love to see the look of anguish on your face when FG are reelected in a few weeks’ time.
Don’t put your eye out with that spoon.
I will, make sure not to choke on your outrage, see you on election day ; )
Hopefully you’re young, & you’ll learn to think for yourself in time little one.
…& I’d suggest not actually putting your eye out just because I advised you not to.
“you’ll learn to think for yourself in time” and vote the way Fergus would find acceptable. The idea that you can think for yourself and would reject FF/SF/AAA/PBP is too bizarre for Fergus to comprehend.
Of course Fergus won’t say what the correct way to vote is, just anyone but FG/Lab, because he recognises the depressing reality that there is no alternative. Even FF are saying they won’t be in power and that’s before the election has kicked off. AAA/PBP/SF don’t want to be in power because it’s easier to complain than have to provide answers that might prove unpopular with the disgruntled voters they rely on.
You’re very very wide of the mark Repro. The idea that you vote to be p1ssed on continually from a height because you can’t think of, or are afraid to vote for an alternative says it all.
…& you’ve left some options out of your list of parties who aren’t FG/ Labour in your catch-all attempt.
Everything you think you know about how I vote is in your head Fergus.
Don’t be coy now, tell us which parties I’ve left out. Social Democrats obviously but I left them out because, sadly, I don’t believe they will be big enough to make a difference. Who else? Renua? The Communist Party of Ireland? The Christian Solidarity party? The we’re not a party just a grouping of independents that may or may not win their seats back party?
I’ve declared several times on here, that I don’t do party loyalty. I believe party loyalty is to blame for where we are now. I suspect FG will unfortunately scrape it in again. In the election. That will for the large part be down to party loyalty, and people thinking there is no alternative because that’s what they heard.
I won’t be voting for FG. I won’t be voting for FF.
Last time around, I voted for Labour. That will never happen again while Joan Burton or Alan Kelly are involved. Labour stabbed me and many others in the back.
I’m keeping my mind open otherwise.
FG are Sh1te by the way.
None of that answers the query on who I left out of the options facing the electorate. What it does show is that you are as lost as the rest of us when it comes to finding an alternative to the current government.
You don’t do party loyalty, but you won’t vote for a labour candidate regardless of how good they are because of the opposite of party loyalty.
Keep on truckin Ferg
I’m pretty sure about not promoting the current crew or FF in any shape or form.
so who will you be voting for Fergus?
From which side are you leaning to the centre from?
It’s a meaningless handle. Who would your alternative to the coalition be?
Why did you choose it, if it’s meaningless?
Does this mean that you actually moist with excitement?
:o
I’m just surprised Fergus hasn’t used the word ‘sheeple’
Ah. Now I know from which side you lean.
You mean he invented a sock and gave it that name because he thought he’d influence more readers if they thought he was centrist? Shocking.
Regardless of how good they are? Good at lying maybe.
Keep on trollin’ rot.
I’m not trolling. You say you are unaffected by party politics but you refuse to vote for someone regardless of their abilities due to the party they belong to. That by definition is voting via party politics.
I am refusing to vote for a party that spit my last vote for them back in my face while laughing. Simple.
Fergus doesn’t believe in any sort of democratic process whine doesn’t return his chosen brand of anarcho-socialist malcontents to the trough where they can take their turn to feed
Another fish troll.
Try responding to the point raised you baby man
Was this article written by a child with a broken crayon and adhd….
Last paragraph was a particular hoot. Roger Casement was simultaneously the leader of, and victim of, a ‘virulently Catholic rebellion’.
How is someone who writes like this employed as a Press Officer? [ Linkedin]
Although, the Women’s Equality Party seems to be an anti-austerity type feminism movement.
Awful article. Is this the New Broadsheet that Mercille was talking about?
Next 6 weeks are going to be looooooong.
I can’t take it anymore. Da nerves. Da nerves. *hops on Aer Lingus website and checks out Easter flights*
sneaky fupps doing an election during the commemorations. trying to get elected off the achievements of their grandfathers
The lifetime of a Govt is 5 years; the last election was in 2011; I would say that it is incidental.
I just got an email from merchant Mustafa . It rivals this post for sincerity although I feel a tad “defiled”. Please advise.
My name is MUSTAFA USMAN from United Arab Emirate and a merchant. I have
been diagnosed with Oesophageal cancer which has now defiled all forms of
medical treatment, and right now I have only about a few weeks to live
according to medical experts report.
I believe when God gives me a second chance to come back into this world
after death, I would live my life a different way from how I have lived
it. Now that God is about call me home, I have willed and given most of my
property and assets to my immediate and extended family members as well as
a few close friends.
I want God to be merciful to me and accept my soul, so I have decided to
give alms to charity organizations, as I want this to be one of the last
good deeds I do on earth. So far, I have distributed money to some charity
organizations in the U.A.E, Algeria and Malaysia. Now that my health has
deteriorated so badly, I can’t do this myself anymore. I once asked
members of my family and a closed associate to close two of my accounts
and distribute the money which I left there to charity organization in
Bulgaria and Cambodia, they refused and kept the money to themselves.
Hence, I do not trust them anymore, as they seem not to be contended with
what I have left for them. The last of my money no one knew whereabouts is
the huge cash deposit $7,100,000,00 million dollars that I have with a
Security Holding Firm in a European country.
I will want you to help me claim this deposit and dispatched it to a
charity for humanitarian work. I have set aside 30% for you and for your
time. Please have the thoughts of dispatching these funds into a charity
for humanitarian work after being secure successfully into your custody.
Reply me for more details via my private account:tam.usman@yandex.com
GOOD BLESS YOU.
MUSTAFA USMAN.
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“Virulently Catholic”? Is this the new post-colonial self-hatred slogan to insult the people who gained Ireland’s independence? Certainly won’t be voting for this crowd now.
The Casement ‘Black Diaries’ were a publicity coup mainly because they would turn British opinion against Roger Casement, a hero who had revealed the brutality of the capitalist empire in the Belgian Congo and in Peru – hands and ears cut off, whole families tortured together, etc. But just 16 years after the death of Oscar Wilde, Britain was still violently anti-homosexual. The allegations did the trick.
The author doesn’t seem to know about the lesbians involved in the Rising, but then, this article has more heat than light.